The Head From the Culture Is One of the Oldest Surviving Examples of Subsaharan Art

Sculpture from Ife

Coordinates: 7°28′twenty″N 4°33′20″Due east  /  7.4722°N four.5556°E  / 7.4722; 4.5556

Bronze Head from Ife
The Ife Head on display at the British Museum
Cloth	"Statuary", actually contumely
Size	height: 35 cm width: 12.v cm depth: 15 cm
Weight	5.1 kg
Created	14th/early on 15th century[1]
Present location	British Museum, London
Registration	Af1939,34.i
Culture	Medieval Yoruba

The Statuary Head from Ife, or Ife Head,^[2] is i of eighteen copper alloy sculptures that were unearthed in 1938 at Ife in Nigeria, the religious and former royal centre of the Yoruba people. It is believed to represent a king. It was probably made in the fourteenth-fifteenth century C.E.^[1] The realism and sophisticated craftsmanship of the objects challenged Western conceptions of African art. The naturalistic features of the Ife heads are unique^{[three] [i]} and the stylistic similarities of these works "suggest that they were made by an individual artist or in a single workshop."^[3]

Description [edit]

Like nigh West African "bronzes" the piece is actually fabricated of copper alloyed with other metals, described by the British Museum as "heavily leaded zinc-brass". Modern practice in museums and archaeology is increasingly to avoid terms such every bit statuary or brass for historical objects in favour of the all-embracing "copper alloy".^[4] The head is made using the lost wax technique and is approximately three-quarters life-size, measuring 35 cm high. The artist designed the caput in a very naturalistic fashion. The face is covered with incised striations, merely the lips are unmarked. The headdress suggests a crown of complex construction, equanimous of different layers of tube shaped beads and tassels. This ornament is typical of the statuary heads from Ife.^[5] The crown is topped past a crest, with a rosette and a plume which now is slightly bent to one side. The crown's surface includes the remains of both red and black paint. The lifelike rendering of sculptures from mediaeval Ife is exceptional in Sub-Saharan African art, and initially was considered the earliest manifestation of a tradition that connected in Yoruba fine art, in early Benin art and other pieces. An excavation in Igbo-Ukwu in 1959 provided scientific evidence of an established metal working civilization and bronze artefacts that may exist dated to the ninth or tenth centuries.

Digging & Removal [edit]

The Ife Head was found by blow in 1938 at the Wunmonije Chemical compound, Ife, during firm-building works amongst sixteen other brass and copper heads and the upper half of a contumely figure. Most of the objects plant in the Wunmonije Compound and neighbouring areas concluded upwardly in the National Museum of Ife, merely a few pieces were taken from Nigeria and are now in the collections of major museums. This detail Ife Head was taken from Nigeria past the editor of the Daily Times of Nigeria, H. Maclear Bate, who probably sold it to the National Art Collections Fund,^{[vi] [vii]} which then passed it onto the British Museum in 1939.

The discovery of the sculptures was the spur for the government to control the export of antiquities from Nigeria. Before this was accomplished, this head fabricated its way to London via Paris and another ii were sent to America. Attempts to prevent further exports, prompted by Leo Frobenius, were successfully promulgated in 1938, when legislation was enacted past the colonial authorities.^[eight] Frobenius was a German ethnologist and archaeologist who was one of the showtime European scholars to take a serious interest in African art, especially that of the Yoruba.

Ife [edit]

Main article: Ifẹ

The Ife head is idea to be a portrait of a ruler known as an Ooni or Oni. Information technology was probably made nether the patronage of Rex Obalufon Alayemore whose famous naturalistic life-size face mask in copper shares stylistic features with this piece of work. Today among the Yoruba, Obalufon is identified as the patron deity of contumely casters. The period in which the piece of work was made was an historic period of prosperity for the Yoruba civilization, which was congenital on trade via the River Niger to the peoples of W Africa. Ife is regarded by the Yoruba people every bit the place where their deities created humans.^[3]

These bronze heads are evidence of additional merchandise since Ife-fabricated glass beads accept been found widely in West Africa. The copper is idea to be from local Nigerian ores, although earlier scholars believed information technology to have come from Central Europe, Northward West Mauritania, the Byzantine Empire, or Southern Kingdom of morocco.

The bronze casts could have been modelled on contemporary terra cotta sculptures.^[9] A long^{[ citation needed ]} tradition of terracotta sculpture with similar characteristics existed in the culture prior to the engagement of the creation of these metal sculptures. Ivory was another fabric used frequently in African art.

The Ife sculptural tradition is one of several West African artistic traditions, including the Bura of Niger (3rd century CE – tenth century CE), Koma of Ghana (seventh century CE – 15th century CE), Igbo-Ukwu of Nigeria (9th century CE – 10th century CE), and Jenne-Jeno of Mali (11th century CE – 12th century CE), that may have been shaped by the earlier West African clay terracotta tradition of the Nok culture of central Nigeria.^[10]

Touch on on fine art history [edit]

When Frobenius discovered the outset example of a similar caput it undermined existing Western understanding of African civilization. Experts did non want to believe that Africa had ever had a civilisation capable of creating artefacts of this quality. Attempting to explain what was thought an anomaly, Frobenius offered his theory that these had been cast past a colony of ancient Greeks established in the thirteenth century BC.^[11] He made a merits, widely circulated in the pop printing, that his hypothesised ancient Greek colony could be the origin of the ancient fable of the lost civilization of Atlantis.^{[12] [xiii] [xiv]}

Information technology is now recognised that these statues represent an indigenous African tradition that attained a high level of realism and refinement.^{[3] [ failed verification ] [x]} The Ife heads are often considered a great achievement of African culture, and information technology is believed that they were made by an private artist in a single workshop.^[3]

Influence on contemporary civilisation [edit]

There is widespread use of the Ife Caput in logos and branding of Nigerian corporations and educational institutions such as Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife.^[15]

The Ife Head was the symbol for the 1973 All-Africa Games in Lagos.^[16]

The Ife Head held by the British Museum was included in the 2010 major exhibition Kingdom of Ife: Sculptures from Westward Africa, adult in partnership with Nigeria's National Committee for Museums and Monuments, the Museum for African Art, New York and the British Museum. The exhibition was office of a series of events that marked the 50th anniversary of Nigerian independence.^[17] In 2011 the Ife Caput was included in the British Museum/BBC'due south A History of the Earth in 100 Objects ^[18]

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See also [edit]

• Archaeology of Igbo-Ukwu
• Republic of benin bronzes
• Bronze Head of Queen Idia

References [edit]

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b c} British Museum. "Object: The Ife Head". British Museum. Archived from the original on xx April 2021. Retrieved 20 April 2021.
2. ^ The name used by the British Museum
3. ^ ^{a b c d east} Ife head, History of the World in 100 Objects, BBC, retrieved thirty November 2013
4. ^ The British Museum collection database "scope notation" on "copper alloy", "brass" and "bronze" reads "The term copper alloy should be searched for total retrievals on objects made or bronze or contumely. This is considering statuary and brass take at times been used interchangeably in the old documentation, and copper blend is the Broad Term of both. In addition, the public may refer to certain collections by their pop name, such as 'The Republic of benin Bronzes' most of which are actually made of brass." British Museum, "Scope Notation" for "copper alloy". Britishmuseum.org. Retrieved on 2014-05-26.
5. ^ Bronzes from Ife and Benin, Peter Herrmann, Berlin, 2007, retrieved thirty November 2013
6. ^ National Art Collections Fund. "Fine art we've helped buy". Art Fund . Retrieved 21 June 2021.
7. ^ Ife head Brass head of a ruler, British Museum highlights, retrieved 30 Nov 2013
8. ^ Hoffman, Barbara T., ed. (2006). Art and cultural heritage : law, policy, and practise (1. publ. ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge Academy Press. p. 138. ISBN0521857643.
9. ^ Smith, Robert (1988). Kingdoms of the Yoruba (3rd ed.). Madison, Wis.: Academy of Wisconsin Press. p. 25. ISBN0299116042.
10. ^ ^{a b} Ramsamy, Edward; Elliott, Carolyn M.; Seybolt, Peter J. (January 5, 2012). Cultural Folklore of the Center E, Asia, and Africa: An Encyclopedia. SAGE Publications. p. 8.
11. ^ Frank Willet (1960). "Ife and Its Archaeology". The Journal of African History. one (ii): 231–248. doi:10.1017/s002185370000181x.
12. ^ On the ruins of Atlantis – Leo Frobenius between research and Vision (in German) Archived 2013-12-03 at the Wayback Automobile, freunde-afrikanischer-kultur.de, retrieved 1 December 2013
13. ^ "High german Discovers Atlantis in Africa; Leo Frobenius Says Find of Bronze Poseidon Fixes Lost Continent's Place" (PDF). The New York Times. January xxx, 1911. Retrieved 18 December 2013.
14. ^ C. Hercules Read (March 1911). "Plato's "Atlantis" rediscovered". Burlington Magazine. Vol. eighteen, no. 96. pp. 330–5. Retrieved 18 December 2013.
15. ^ Platte, Editha (2010). Bronze Caput from Ife. Hambolu, Chiliad. O. (Musa O.). London: British Museum Press. ISBN9780714125923. OCLC 430498709.
16. ^ "Kingdom of Ife: sculptures from West Africa". British Museum . Retrieved 2018-xi-09 .
17. ^ "Kingdom of Ife". British Museum . Retrieved 2018-11-10 .
18. ^ "BBC - A History of the World - Object : Ife head". www.bbc.co.united kingdom of great britain and northern ireland . Retrieved 2018-xi-10 .

Further reading

• Suzanne Preston Blier, Fine art and Risk in Ancient Yoruba: Ife History, Politics, and Identity c.1300, Cambridge University Press, 2015
• John Mack (ed), Africa, Arts and Cultures, London 2005
• Editha Platte, Bronze Caput from Ife, British Museum Printing, 2010
• Frank Willett, The Art of Ife (CD Rom), The Academy of Glasgow, 2004

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze_Head_from_Ife